Jan. 28, 2005
Dolores Beasley/Gretchen Cook-Anderson
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-1753/0836)
RELEASE: 05-033
NASA SELECTS TECHNOLOGY VALIDATION EXPERIMENTS
NASA has chosen four teams to develop a suite of advanced technologies
slated for space flight validation on the New Millennium Programs
Space Technology 8 (ST8) Mission.
The ST8 Mission, slated for launch in 2008, is a New Millennium
Carrier that will host a varied payload of four advanced
technologies. Each technology validation experiment will include
diagnostic instruments. They will perform detailed measurements to
characterize and determine how well the technologies performance in
space corresponds to predictions derived from ground-based testing
and modeling. The resulting data will be provided to science mission
planners to enable a broad range of space-based science projects at
significantly reduced risk and cost. The selected suite of advanced
technology experiments includes:
Ultraflex Next Generation Solar Array System (NGU) from AEC-Able
Engineering, Inc., Goleta, Calif. The NGU is an ultra-lightweight
flexible-blanket solar array that deploys to provide a significant
advancement in performance over existing state-of-the-art for high
power arrays. The proposed experiment cost for the NGU is $6.9
million.
SAILMAST Ultra Lightweight Boom from AEC-Able Engineering, Inc. The
SAILMAST is an ultra-light graphite mast intended for solar sail
propulsion systems. The proposed experiment cost for the SAILMAST is
$4 million.
Miniature Loop Heat Pipe Small Spacecraft Thermal Management System
(MLHP) from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The
MLHP can transport large heat loads over long distances with small
temperature differences and without external pumping powers to
provide precise temperature control and reduce the need for
supplemental heaters. The proposed experiment cost for the MLHP is
$9.8 million.
Environmentally Adaptive Fault Tolerant Computing System (EAFTC) from
Honeywell International, Inc., Clearwater, Fla. The EAFTC will
provide high rate on board processing for science data and autonomous
control functions. The proposed experiment cost for the EAFTC is $10
million.
“These technological capabilities will provide orders of magnitude in
performance compared to the state-of-the-art technologies used in
NASA satellites,” said NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator of the
Science Mission Directorate, Dr. Ghassem Asrar. “Future NASA science
and exploration missions will benefit greatly from these
technological capabilities, which will be developed for first flight
validation. The ST8 project will effectively develop these
technologies from the early stages to flight readiness, and then
validate them in space prior to using them in NASA sponsored
scientific missions," he said.
NASA’s New Millennium Program plans to invest approximately $40
million to develop and flight-validate the selected technology
experiments. The total project cost for formulation and
implementation, including technology payloads, the carrier spacecraft
and the launch vehicle, is planned at $100 million.
The Programs' previous technology validation missions included Deep
Space 1, Deep Space 2 and Earth Observing 1. The programs validated a
broad range of advanced technologies including ion propulsion,
autonomous onboard mission planning, and advanced land-imaging
instruments. Current projects include: Space Technology 5, a mission
to validate next generation constellations of micro-satellites; Space
Technology 6, which is developing both an autonomous onboard science
and mission planning system and an advanced inertial stellar compass;
and Space Technology 7, which is developing the precision sensing and
control systems required for future gravity wave science.
The four technology teams for the ST8 flight validation opportunity
were selected from 37 proposers responding to a NASA Research
Announcement (NRA) in February, 2003. As a result of the NRA, 10
teams were awarded contracts for a six-month concept definition study
phase. Study phase results were evaluated by a NASA-led independent
peer review, which culminated in the selection of the four teams for
continuation to the formulation refinement and implementation phases.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the New
Millennium Program for the Science Mission Directorate. More
information about the New Millennium Program and its technology
validation projects, including ST8, is available on the Web at:
http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov
For more information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov
http://www.nasa.gov
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